Vindication
by Balletfuxk
Summary: Old wounds are harder to heal. Mizuhikishipping.


_These are some themes for my Mizuhikishipping fan club over on deviantArt. Since we didn't give a specific format in which the themes should be addressed - fanfic, fanart, etc. - I chose to do little mini-drabbles because it would be too big of a hassle to do full-length one-shots for each of them, and I have no artistic ability at all._

_Enjoy!_

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**Forgiveness**

When she appears in the world of nothingness to which he has exiled himself, he almost believes that she has finally forgiven him.

**Duty**

She never wanted to fight him, but with all eyes intently on her, waiting, watching, she had no choice but to become his enemy, and he had no choice but to follow suit.

**Memory**

As she walks through the library, fingers brushing over familiar leather-bound spines, she wonders how many hours they spent together reading the forgotten tomes.

**Chain**

When she sees the Red Chain in its full glory for the first time at the Spear Pillar, her mind jumps to their younger days and she thinks of the red necklace he made her, still safely locked in her old jewelry box.

**Gift**

When they are still young he gruffly presents her with a rubber band, expressing his annoyance about never being able to see her face beneath all that hair of hers.

**Dance**

It is her sixteenth birthday: despite his various protests, she pouts at him and he gives in to her demands, even though he knows she'll pinch him each and every time he steps on her feet.

**Vindicated**

She returns to talk him out of his self-inflicted exile, but her anger becomes something else entirely when he sheepishly attempts to explain that he has done everything for her.

**Monster**

She watches his mind unravel, witnesses every moment of his rapid descent to insanity, but only when he challenges the child does she see him for what he is.

**Argument**

They are twelve and fourteen, sitting on the floor in the Canalave Library and having the same heated debate as always before she cuts him off and insists that they agree to disagree.

"We'll never see eye to eye."

**Training**

She is brutal: he watches transfixed as her Gible destroys his Houndour, almost flinching when he delivers the final blow. It is in the following moments, as he notices the triumphant grin on her face, that he realizes that she will succeed without fail to not simply follow, but conquer her dreams.

**Adolescence**

As children they spend more hours than can be counted together. They read books that most adults would not bother to peruse; they debate topics far too old for them; they grow in each other's presence and by the time she is thirteen and he is fifteen they are older than their years indicate.

**Window**

He wakes in the middle of the night to the sound of pebbles tapping against his first-story bedroom window, opening it to see her standing outside with a pillow and a book.

**Flashlight**

She grips the flashlight tightly, nearly dragging him into the dark ruins. The light shines yellow against the arching cave walls above them, and when he protests again she spins and points the light at his face.

"Don't be such a baby, Cyrus. Here, hold the flashlight while I go look at the drawings…"

**Domination**

He is all teeth and some tongue, bruising force and armed with the desire to cause pain; she responds with dangerously manicured nails, clawing and leaving angry red marks in their path. They have never done what other couples do, never quite grasped the concept of love and pleasure: they are two leaders, clashing and fighting tooth-and-nail (literally) in a power-play expertly disguised as romance.

**Flower**

Some would call her a flower - she is beautiful, like some kind of exotic rose that one only manages to stumble upon once in a lifetime - but he knows better; she has never been a flower, not even close. At the very least she is a weed, a wildflower: pretty enough, but resilient and a damn annoyance to get rid of.

**Water**

Sunyshore rises bold and bright behind them, lighting the night sky and reflecting the water with varying hues of white and yellow. The lighthouse light sweeps above their heads, and he watches with a hint of amusement as she plops down on the shore, waves crashing over her head again and again until he finally drags her - laughing, no less - out of the water and delivers a stern lecture about the dangers of undertow and rip currents.

**Faith**

There were times, long ago, when she would express her fears to him: fears that she would become nothing more than her grandmother, trapped by her hometown and its customs; during these times, he would hold her hand and remind her of her talent and tell her that he knew she would go just as far as she wanted to in life.

**Winter**

They sit in the snow at Lake Acuity, huddled together for warmth: she is on his lap, enclosed with him in his massive fur-lined coat; his chin rests atop her head, while she buries herself into him, cheek pressed against his chest, and he muses idly that if keeping her so close is a benefit of living in the cold, he would not mind moving to Snowpoint.

**End**

They come to the crossroad when she is eighteen and he is twenty, and she can no longer stand his constant talk of a new world. Their final argument is heated, and words that they do not mean are exchanged and the apologies are left unsaid for the first time, and this is what makes all the difference. He leaves, vanishes into thin air and does not say goodbye; she believes it to be their tragic end, but later learns how foolish she was: after all, that was only the beginning.

**Apocalypse**

She had never believed in the ever-popular hype about the ending of the world and all that jazz, despite her profound knowledge and interest in the old myths, and she knew better than anyone that the events on the Spear Pillar and in the Distortion World were the closest Sinnoh would ever come to experiencing an Apocalypse.

**Picture**

He watches the flames lick the edges of the old photograph, devouring the memory whole as he stares on it with hardened eyes, reminding himself that this is just another step in the process of letting her go.

**Lies**

She moves slowly, carefully, head spinning with lies to tell Lucian the next morning if he wakes to find that she has gone.

**Silhouette**

Slowly, patiently, he wills away the emotions, and with them the memories until she is nothing more than a distant, vague tug on his heartstrings and a haunting silhouette in the back of his mind.

**Whisper**

She stands before the portal back home, faltering slightly and turning back to face the world which she knows she will never see again.

"Please… come back…"

**Shadow**

For months after the Distortion World, everything is him: the sounds of Lucian moving quietly around the room at night, the sudden and strong feelings of being watched, and the shadows that fall too long and sinister all him, returning to her at last with spiteful intentions.

**Warmth**

He rolls over, careful not to pull the blankets from her still-sleeping form as he does so, and revels in the feeling of her beside him.

**Regret**

They stand at the edge of Hell, where nothing is as it should be and their fate rests in the hands of a child; they are enemies, and he regrets nothing.

**Bleak**

He can't help but hate these days, when there is no sunlight, only grey clouds and austere skies, because they bring about a certain distant laziness in him; he spends these days staring at the sky, thinking of her eyes.

**Lace**

He doesn't know how to react or what to do; she is open before him, a flower with the petals spread - but she is not a flower, no, she is much more - and only the lace, black like everything else on her, stands in his way.

**Travel**

It seems they never stop moving, never run out of places to go; she wants to see the world, but he can only take her as far as the Sinnoh region extends. The rest she must conquer on her own.


End file.
